War Games II

[Catwho]

War Games Chapter II

Disclaimer: None of them are mine. I'm not making money. Please don't sue.

Note: Some references to "Under the Dog Star" and "Thousand Nights" in this chapter. Lots of Sesh in this one, too. *drools*

* * *

* * *
Higurashi Shrine, Tokyo
* * *

"Hey, look, I think I see him!"

A crowd of children had gathered around the Go Shimboku of the Higurashi Shrine. The sacred tree, more than five hundred years old (and probably much older, although their shrine records only went back for five hundred years old), had bloomed for only the second time in living memory. The soft white flowers drifted down lazily from the branches in the warm breeze.

Everyone knew the legend of the Higurashi shrine, or at least they thought they did. A miko had traveled back in time to rescue the dog demon, Inuyasha. Recently, a young boy had taken up the "role" of Inuyasha, and could often be seen sleeping in the tree where he had supposedly been sealed since the feudal age.

Inuyasha knew the real story. The children on the ground down below him thought he was just playacting, but those who lived at the shrine kept what they considered to be a wonderful secret: all their legends were really true.

One of the children threw a rock up into the tree. Inuyasha caught it in one hand without moving from his comfortable spot on a high branch.

"Oy, stop that, ya little brats," he barked down at them, and threw the stone back. With shrieks of delight the children scampered further away. Baiting Inuyasha had become a neighborhood game.

Feh, Inuyasha thought, dangling his arms at his side and wishing Kagome were home. At least this gives me *something* useful to do. Being a legend incarnate is the most boring thing in the world.

He sighed. The past few months since Kagome had discovered him inside the Go Shimboku had been wonderful on one level, and miserable on another. He was glad he had waited for Kagome. It had been the best thing to do. Inside the tree, he had been able to sleep . . . gaining consciousness only when someone touched it, watching the world as it shaped and grew, watching Miroku and Sango's children guard the shrine, then their grandchildren, and then all their descendents as they grew and adapted to the changing world. Everything had been written in legend, so that when Kagome finally returned the last time, sobbing because she had lost him . . . she would find him again. It had worked.

Five hundred years ain't such a long time, Inuyasha thought smugly to himself, not in the contexts of lifelong love.

Happily Ever After hadn't worked quite as he'd planned, unfortunately. Beauty had woken the Beast, only to have him learn that they couldn't get married until she turned sixteen, that she had to finish middle school (and she wanted to go to high school, although her little trips to the Sengoku Jidai had hampered that path), and that in this day and age, being tough wasn't enough to let you survive.

Ignoring the laughter of the children below him, the grumpy hanyou plopped stomach down on the branch, letting his arms and legs dangle in the air below.

I should have gone ahead and become a human, he griped to himself for the umpteenth time. At least I'd blend in . . . there are no more demons in Japan.

That sad fact is one that he'd refused to acknowledge on his previous trips to Kagome's time. He'd assumed they'd all gone into hiding, or simply moved away from the cities, but a trip to the forests north of Tokyo had revealed that even in the most rural, inaccessible areas, the demons were gone. All of them, gone. Inuyasha had never detected a single one.

The miko of today were weak, watered down ceremonial versions of their predecessors. No demon hunters like Sango were left. Even the Shinto and Buddhist clergy possessed no actual powers anymore. The spirits had left. Kagome had been an exception; her abilities had not awakened until she had been thrust into an environment where they were needed.

That was why Inuyasha felt so out of place. The one joy in his life was Kagome, and even she was forced to spend at least ten hours a day at school.

Underneath him, the crowd of younger children gave up the game and decided to visit Kagome's grandfather, who would tell them cool stories about youkai and miko in the old days.

Things became silent for a moment until Kagome arrived home from school, interrupting his meditative funk.

"Inuyasha!" she called from below, her hands on her hips, her face turned up to the tree where she knew he waited. "I'm home!"

Gracefully, he rolled over off the branch, catching it like a gymnast on a bar with both hands. He then dropped silently from branch to branch to the ground, where he landed upright. He felt his ankle protest, and he mentally complained about not getting enough exercise anymore.

"Welcome home," he said shortly, crossing his arms in front of him. Old postures die harder than habits.

"A letter came for you." Kagome dangled the envelope in front of his nose, her eyes suspicious. "You didn't enter one of those contests again, did you? It's from the Sony corporation."

He snatched the letter. "Don't read my mail," he growled, and blinked at the return address. Why had anyone mailed him? He'd entered a contest from a television program a few weeks ago, and received a polite form letter requesting both his first and last names for proper eligibility. The fact that the Japanese people didn't always have last names never occurred to them. Clan names had historically been a thing for nobles, and after Inuyasha's time, as the merchant class grew . . . everyone HAD to have a last name. It was the "in" thing. Granted, most were no more imaginative than "in the middle of the rice field" but it defined them, their position, and their role in life.

Inuyasha, who had no role in life, needed no last name. When he married Kagome, he'd become a Higurashi, but in the meantime, he was no one.

He picked the letter open with a claw, while Kagome leaned around and peered at it expectantly.

"Dear Inuyasha of the Higurashi Shrine," he read.

Your unique talents have caught the attention
of our Game Development Department. We are
requesting your assistance as one of
our developers. Your skills have been long
awaited, as has your perspective of one who
lives on both sides. Please go to the Sony
Building, Ginza, 26th floor, and ask to
speak with Sara. She will explain everything.

Regards,
S.

Kagome's mouth had formed a perfect O.

"Reminds me of 'Please Save My Earth," she said, her eyes wide as saucers.

"Where's this Ginza?" Inuyasha asked, looking in confusion at the letter. "Is that another city? Another country?"

"It's the shopping district, in downtown. We went there once, remember? For Souta's birthday dinner." Kagome had unconsciously clutched Inuyasha's arm, and she kept shaking her head. "I don't understand how they know about you. The kids all think you're someone playacting, and we haven't discouraged that line of reasoning. People don't *believe* in demons anymore."

Inuyasha carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope.

"I want to know who 'S' is, myself," he grumbled, and sighed. He had a bad feeling about this. "Come on, Kagome. Your mom'll be getting worried." He tugged her toward the house, and she went without protest.

"It looks like they want to give you a job." She smiled at the thought. "I can't imagine you as a salary man, although I think this will be good for you. It'll give you something to do besides sit around all day and wait for me."

"Feh," Inuyasha replied, and glanced nervously at the letter in his hand. Who was S? Who was Sara? Who knew that a hanyou lived at the Higurashi shrine?

* * *
Luxemburg
* * *

The fire burned freshly in the fireplace, and a maid carefully dusted a bookshelf, revealing that someone other than the chair denizens knew about the room. It was still early in the day in Europe. Those who normally met there would not arrive until much later, after dinner, when the mind was sharpened considerably by a good gourmet meal.

A junior member sat in one of the chairs, preparing for her first meeting She had not known the exact meeting time, so that she had arrived much too early. Rather than be embarrassed by her mistake, she had decided to take the time to write her father and sisters a long overdue letter home.

"Dear Daddy and Akane and Kasumi (and everyone else too)," she began. She chewed the end of her expensive Waterman monogrammed quill pen for a moment, and then began to tell them about how nice Sweden was at that time of the year, especially for investment bankers who liked to become very rich.

* * *

The maid bobbed a curtsy and left the meeting room. The junior member of Soldats was Asian, something that had caused her to nearly drop her feather duster until she recognized the girl. Nabiki Kuno, who had become the second richest woman in Japan by the time she was 20, and the third richest woman in the world by the time she was 25. Everyone in Soldats had been pleased when she sought contact in a quiet, traditional manner: calling her lawyer.

Everyone also believed she would do well in the organization. Rumor was she had poor relations back home in Japan and she refused to send a penny to them. The maid, Penelope, whose family had been serving Soldats for nearly 600 years, thought very highly of that callousness. Those who triumphed in the world did so by their own ruthlessness.

(It should be noted that women in Penelope's family doubled as both maids and spies, and Penelope's monthly salary as a maid for the House of Soldats in Luxemburg was more than many actual aristocrats saw in a year.)

Dusting finished for the morning, the maid returned to her quarters and changed into a nice Parisian gown for an outing, and a meeting with one of her clients. Soldats were loyal to their organization first and foremost, but the factions within it usually paid more for information on the *other* factions. She wasn't being a double agent, per se; she was being a Soldats.

* * *
Sony Tower, Ginza District, Tokyo, Japan
* * *

If you took the largest denomination of Japanese currency in existence, folded it as many times as possible, then dropped it from the top of Sony Tower onto the plaza below, it would not buy the square centimeter of land that it fell upon. Land in Ginza was worth more than its footage in gold. When Sony had purchased an outrageous 765 square feet back in the 1960s, the land had cost the company twice as much as the actual building.

Sesshoumaru disapproved of throwing anything out of the windows, and was glad that the tower windows were actually hermetically sealed to prevent that sort of thing. Pedestrians walked below.

The ancient demon sat at a giant oak desk, in a little known section of the Sony business tower.

The mighty company had long since outgrown the ten story building, which had nearly bankrupted it back when it had been built. They had gambled back then, and won. Sony had not only become a successful museum and tourist attraction, it had revitalized the sagging Ginza shopping district's economy, and its lead had refreshed the Japanese economy as a whole.

Now, in the heart of a recession, Sesshoumaru wondered why they had bothered.

He had been with them since nearly the beginning, under one name and disguise or another. Now, as one of the lesser known vices-CEOs who still had enough power and time to actually get things done, he was free to let go of his disguises during even normal business hours. The only humans who ever got as far as Sara's office never got any farther, because the only people who ever needed to see Sesshoumaru nowadays were demons.

The youkai of Japan had indeed disappeared, but only into the other dimension. A great many still lived and worked in Tokyo, and he had gathered them together slowly in the heart of the Sony Empire. Most of them, like Sara, had been hand picked. Only those who wore a human guise could work in public positions, but many of the designers and warehouse workers were in some of the stranger shapes that demons came in.

The video game industry was their favorite toy. First the Playstation, then its sequel, the Playstation II. Demons *loved* video games. Ever since Nintendo released the Famicon, youkai had plunged happily into the messy medium of game design. A great many names on game credits were actually pseudonyms from demons that preferred to remain anonymous.

Sesshoumaru checked his appointments for the day. He had sent the letter to Inuyasha only yesterday, but it was possible that the hanyou would have gotten it already. The one that the Associates( as he had taken to calling them) had recommended, Ranma Saotome, would begin the next day. That left only one more duck to line up, his actual platform engineer.

She would be down in the beta-testing room, most likely.

He pressed down on a section of the oak desk, and a smooth section lifted slightly to reveal an intercom. "Sara, I will be gone for a brief while," he said into the tiny microphone.

"Yes sir! No one is expected anyway. I'll man the fort."

Sesshoumaru nodded in appreciation. Sara was a good woman, one who had definitely been worth waiting five hundred years for. Before, when he had met her, his loss of Makoto had been too fresh, too strong. He had loved Makoto dearly, and her death had frozen his heart. Not even Sara could thaw it then. Rin had melted it somewhat, with her childlike innocence, but in the end she had gone back to the humans, where she belonged, once again leaving Sesshoumaru alone.

He stepped down the old fire access staircase, to avoid meeting any humans in his current fully relaxed condition. Two levels down . . . two hallways across.

The beta-testing room.

He didn't knock, since there would be nothing but youkai in there. Inside was dark, and extraordinarily messy. At least a dozen platform systems connected to the bank of monitors and televisions that lined the walls. There was currently one lone occupant, his platform developer. She was lounging back in an office chair, her feet on the desk before her, her gaze affixed to a heated game of Valkyrie Profile.

She was also one of his special crack team of beta testers, which consisted mostly of eleven year olds and college students.
"Greetings, Ruka," Sesshoumaru said, his clear soft voice ringing across the room, causing Ruka to jump in her seat guiltily. She recovered quickly, as her usual bright arrogance overtook her fear.

"Greetings, Sesshoumaru-sama!" She smiled at him, her young freckled face glowing eerily in the light of the monitors around her. "I wasn't expecting you."

"Obviously," he commented dryly. "Your continued lack of adherence to company policy annoys me."

Ruka twirled one of her green ponytails thoughtfully. "I was trying to see if I could tweak a Playstation game to run on half the components in the original platform." She pointed to the monitor, where brightly colored gods had paused in their gleeful annihilation of one another. "It's worked pretty well, although some of the accelerated graphics are still off."

Ruka had been one of the initial designers of the Playstation II, and everyone -- human and demon alike -- had wished she'd also been around for the original Playstation. As far as youkai went, she was not very powerful, but she had an uncanny gift with machines. They bowed before her like the wind had bowed to Kagura, and like corporate minions now bowed to him. She had grown up around technology and reveled in it, loving nothing more than forcing machines to work to their best potential. In all likelihood she was telling the truth, and HAD forced a Playstation game to run on half its required hardware.

"Regardless of your current task's relevance to platform development, do refrain from having your feet upon the table," he admonished. The twelve year old youkai girl immediately dropped them down to the floor.

"Sorry," she grumbled, sitting up straight and setting her hands primly on her lap. "How may I assist you, Sesshoumaru-sama?"

That was more like it. He commanded respect from his employees, and did not like to have to demand it.

"We begin work on the new platform tomorrow," he said. "Our sponsor's candidate for the 3D model has been hired, and you'll begin engine development tomorrow."

Ruka's pout was immediately eclipsed by a determined, eager expression. "Yes!" she cried, smashing her fist into the arm of her chair. "Thank you, sir!"

"There will also be a new member on the development team," he told her. "A hanyou. His name is Inuyasha."

The girl blinked. "A hanyou? Wow, I didn't know those still existed. Ever since the Great Migration . . . I mean. Wow."

"Tell the others to prepare the status logs. There can be no mistakes." He said the last sentence with a faintly menacing tone of voice, and then turned to leave.

"Yes sir," she chirped, and made a show of turning off the video game. "Leave it all to us."

He nodded in acknowledgement, and left the beta testing room.

* * *

Inuyasha, dressed in his normal garb with the addition of a baseball cap to cover his ears, had to spend at least a full minute in the elevator before he remembered that he had to press the button. Kagome's mother had gone with him on the train ride to Ginza, and was now outside window shopping while he went through whatever the hell he'd been called there for.

At the twenty-sixth floor the elevator stopped. He stepped out, relieved to be free from the stuffy little box.

He walked down the hallway, sniffing his way rather than reading the signs. The letter had had an almost familiar scent to it, and those same notes were present all through this floor of the building. Where had he smelled it before? Who was it that had that particular flavor?

The smell was strongest in front of a plain, unmarked door. He glared at it for a few minutes before shrugging and walking in, unannounced.

The room was small but brightly lit. It held a single desk off to one side, with a lone woman in it, who was carefully typing something on a miniature computer.

She turned when she heard him enter, her large blue eyes widening in surprise. In that instant, she gave off a brief flare of youki -- the first that Inuyasha had ever felt in Kagome's time since he'd killed the Noh mask.

"Greetings! You must be Inuyasha." She smiled sweetly. "Unfortunately, you've caught us at a bad time, since the Vice-Chairman is not in at the moment. But please, have a seat." She gestured to a few comfortable chairs that were near the door where Inuyasha stood. "As soon as he comes back in, you can go into his office. He wanted to speak directly with you first, which is quite an honor."

"You're a youkai," Inuyasha accused, glaring angrily at the woman.

She shrugged, tapping one manicured finger against her desk. "Yes, well, who isn't in this office building?" She sniffed a bit, and then went back to her typing. "You're a hanyou. The first one I've ever met, actually. Not many youkai interact with humans nowadays."

Inuyasha's mind was reeling with the possibilities. There was at least one full blooded youkai left in Japan, and she spoke of others. Where had they all gone? Where were they now? Why weren't they giving off waves and waves of youki that he could detect like he could in the old days?

"The Vice-CEO said you'd been sealed right through the Great Migration, so you probably are wondering where the heck everyone has gone," she said conversationally, as if reading his mind. "We're still around. By the way, you might want to hide your youki, if you have the spell. You're broadcasting to every budding psychic in the city as you are."

Inuyasha was about to respond that he had no idea how to hide is youki, but at that moment a calm voice rang through the intercom in the airy little room.

"I have returned," it said.

Sara pressed a button on her computer and answered, "Welcome back, sir. Inuyasha is here."

"So quickly? Good. Please send him in."

Sara smiled prettily at Inuyasha, and tilted her head toward the door behind her. "You may go in now."

Inuyasha hated this time. Even youkai were now as polite as their human counterparts, apparently. Inuyasha, with his rough language and course manners, would stick out like a sore thumb even among the other half of his heritage.

The door had no handle, so he touched it lightly. To his surprise it hissed open sideways, like an old sliding rice paper door. Behind it was a much darker room, lit only by the sunlight streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows. The faintly familiar smell swelled until it was almost overpowering.

A large wooden desk sat squarely in the center of the room.

Behind it sat Sesshoumaru.

"Do stop gawking like an idiot and step inside, Inuyasha," Sesshoumaru said curtly. Inuyasha snapped his jaw shut and stomped forward, unable to believe his eyes.

Sesshoumaru had aged considerably, but gracefully. His hair was as silver as ever, and his smooth features bore no trace of wrinkles or wear, but the air of boyish youth that had adorned him even at the age of eighty was now gone, replaced by the assurance of a youkai in his prime. It had been Sesshoumaru's scent that Inuyasha had smelled on the letter and in the hallway. How had he forgotten that scent? So close to his own, but sharper -- the scent of the forests and the moonlight?

"You," Inuyasha finally bit out. "You're the one who sent the letter."

"I see that your mind hasn't completely rotted from all that time you spent sealed in the shrine's tree." Sesshoumaru calmly placed a pair of half moon spectacles on his nose, and glared at his half brother. "Unlike you, this Sesshoumaru spent the last four centuries doing something useful."

Inuyasha could stand it no longer. "What the HELL is going on around here?" he growled, and stomped toward Sesshoumaru. "You're dressed all funny, and all the demons are gone from Japan, and then I come here and there's a youkai for the first time in months!"

"Please calm down, Inuyasha. You are annoying me."

The hanyou knew that he wasn't going to get any answers from Sesshoumaru until the older demon was ready to give them. Frustrated, he stomped over to a chair on the far side of the room and plopped down, glowering. Sesshoumaru ignored his theatrics for several moments, before leaning back in his own chair and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I will give you a few of the answers you seek. The reason that you haven't felt any youkai in Japan is because most of them are no longer in this world. Those who are have control of their demon auras, to the extant that humans who once could detect them no longer even exist. It has been that way for a hundred and fifty years in Japan, and even longer in other parts of the world."

"Why?"

"Humans. Their population greatly outnumbers us, and they have weapons that any sensible youkai lives in deadly fear of. An ancient youkai exterminator used our bones and body parts to create weapons to harm us. Modern humans use metal that can puncture even a dragon's hide in an instant. Rather than fight for dominance in a world where we lived in danger of our lives every day, we chose to flee to another world of our own. That was the Great Migration."

Inuyasha's anger faded as Sesshoumaru explained the need for the separate dimension. In the Demon World, only a portal away, the youkai had exploded in population just like the humans had in this world. It was as if the two types of beings had kept each other in check; left alone, they had both rapidly grown to consume all the resources that their respective worlds had to offer.

Finally, Inuyasha asked the question he had had since he first got the letter. "But what do you want with ME?"

Sesshoumaru casually rearranged stacks of paper on his desk. "There is a faction in the Demon World that seeks to once again overpower the human population of this world, and claim it for our own. They feel as though the humans should never have been left to their own devices, since they've botched up this world tremendously. Youkai in power once more would teach the humans all that they have lost."

"Are you one of them? You hate humans."

"You never did know the true story as to why I hated humans, and disliked hanyou, Inuyasha. That was a long time ago." Sesshoumaru's impassive expression dropped for a moment, revealing a pain in his eyes that no amount of centuries would erase, but he quickly put his mask back in place. "I am not one of that faction. In fact, I seek to prevent that faction from gaining power. That is why I called you here."

"What?"

"Inuyasha, I need you." Sesshoumaru finished sorting the paperwork, and very calmly folded his hands in front of him. "There are no hanyou left. I need you to set an example as to why humans and youkai should avoid interaction whenever possible."

Inuyasha's anger returned. "So you want to parade me around as some sort of inferior breed?" He leapt of from his chair and unsheathed Tessaiga; it immediately blossomed into an enormous ivory blade that seemed to hum with energy."

"Inuyasha. Put the sword *away*." Sesshoumaru's voice had dropped at least ten degrees.

Inuyasha did not. He kept it at the ready, his eyes burning with resentment so fierce that Sesshoumaru subtlety shifted to the defensive.

The older demon tried again. "You are a bridge between the worlds. As you well know, you are very fortunate to have come out half-transformed rather than half-monstrous as most hanyou are wont to do. What if a weaker youkai were to breed with a human? A beast would be born, one that had no intelligence, no means of securing a living in either world."

Tessaiga dropped maybe an inch. Inuyasha waited for Sesshoumaru to go on.

"Without Tessaiga, your youkai blood isn't sealed. I have seen you at that worst, Inuyasha, and it isn't a pretty sight. There ARE no more people capable of creating something like Tessaiga. What if another hanyou were to go into a killing rage like you?"

Finally Inuyasha seemed to understand. "It isn't me you want as an example, just my youkai form."

Sesshoumaru nodded. "Precisely."

With a sigh, Inuyasha re-sheathed his treasured sword and walked over to the desk, where he met with Sesshoumaru almost nose to nose.

"So is that all you wanted me for?"

"Not quite. I also would like you to join my platform development team. It will give you something useful to do, and keep you from drawing attention at that shrine where you live. Humans nowadays don't believe in youkai, but having a hanyou living in a tree, while cute at first, will inevitably draw suspicion where it is least needed." Sesshoumaru shoved some forms toward Inuyasha. "Sign these. You begin tomorrow. And do try to find some decent clothing. This isn't the Sengoku Jidai anymore; Sony is a white collar industry, and you'll need to wear a shirt and tie. You'll also need to have your family created a bank account so that we may deposit your paychecks. I have taken the liberty of creating a tax ID number for you and a false identity as well as securing you a visa; be sure to use those."

Inuyasha's jaw flapped open a for the second time in the past ten minutes as he tried to absorb all that Sesshoumaru was saying. Mechanically, he reached for the forms and looked at the printed kanji name that had been neatly type at the top.

Higurashi Inuyasha.

He signed it.

* * *
End Chapter 2
* * *

[ice princess]

HOLY COW!!! How has no one responded to this wonderful chapter of your FABULOUS fic??? That's what I don't like about the crossovers forum-no one goes here!!! And believe you me, I would marry a good crossover if I could! Since yours is amazing...okay, no! I just had to tell you how great this chapter was. I LOVE Sesshy like this, and the plot is already deeply intriguing. I wish I'd seen the other two anime used in this fic.

If you have the time, could you simply point out the other characters who aren't in Ranma or Inuyasha? Just their names would be fine! Oh, my oh my, I can not WAIT for more!!!

~ice princess

[Elyn Yuy]

This is great!!!!

Please continue!!! CATWHO!!!! PLEASE!!!FINISH!!!

pretty please?

Elyn Yuy